"Coyness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Seth, whose innate culture could not but communicate itself, Cyclona was totally untutored. She knew nothing of coyness, caprice or mannerisms. Singleness of purpose and unselfishness shone in her tranquil and steadfast gaze which Hugh was fortunate enough ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... notable difference in this respect between the sexes; but during the latter part of the second period of childhood, boys are unquestionably more active. In general, the girl-child, when in love, displays far less coyness and reserve than the young woman. In this respect the difference between children and adults is most marked. A girl of eleven, for example, will not make any difficulties about the exchange of love-letters with the boy she ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and Pastimes of my own sex. The difference was more remarkable, as you know the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour. But Betty—I was christened Elizabeth—was always gammocking and tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's apron, or demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, or singing ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... permitted to accompany them; Rose was walking between them. Frederick, radiant with delight at the masters' praise, and intoxicated with happiness, ventured to breathe many a daring word in Rose's ear which she, however, casting down her eyes in maidenly coyness, pretended not to hear. Rather she turned to Reinhold, who, according to his wont, was running on with all sorts of merry nonsense; nor did he hesitate to place his arm in Rose's. Whilst even at a considerable distance ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... for some time past paid his addresses to her, I think that we may consider ourselves fully justified in attributing the slightly equivocal nature of her answer to a pardonable girlish modesty and coyness, and that I shall not be premature in offering you my hearty congratulations on the successful issue of your suit—a-hem I—" And so saying, Mr. Coleman rose from his seat, and taking Lawless's unwilling hand in his own, shook it with ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... face all the signs which promise a life out of the common. The girl was a shy little thing, with her hair done up in a childlike fashion that well became her. She was a dainty little mortal. Her eyes were almond-shaped, and with the coyness of her sex she kept shooting out glances from the corners of them at the three men who were looking at her. Her cheeks were pale, with just a suspicion of colour painted into them by the deft hand of nature; whilst her lips had been touched with the faintest dash ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... working uncloistered in the streets, Lily viewed that as neither the one thing nor the other, neither religious nor secular; and she was persuaded that a little exertion on the part of the brother, whom she viewed as a paladin, would overcome all coyness on the lady's part. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the dilatory coyness of Ajut, was yet resolved to omit no tokens of amorous respect; and therefore presented her at his departure with the skins of seven white fawns, of five swans and eleven seals, with three marble lamps, ten vessels of seal oil, and a large kettle of brass, which he had purchased ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... man appeared. Other instances might of course be cited to show that the adage about the hour and the man is more picturesque than true. The democratic movements of 1848-49 went to pieces largely owing to the coyness of the requisite hero. Or rather, perhaps, we ought to say that the heroes were there, in the persons of Cavour and Garibaldi, Bismarck and Moltke; but no one was at hand to set them in the places which they filled so ably in 1858-70. Will the future see the hapless, unguided efforts of to-day ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... in his heart as thought it were her only haven. His brow cleared at this proof of the full extent of his mistress's attachment, coming to him as it were by accident. An inexplicable fear seemed to have overcome her coyness, and her love was visible for a moment without a veil. Unfortunately for both of them, Madame du Gua saw it all; like a miser who gives a feast, she seemed to count the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... gross offence. It appeareth to me that even to praise one's self, although it be shameful, is less shameful than to throw a burning coal into the incense-box that another doth hold to waft before us, and then to snift and simper over it, with maidenly, wishful coyness, as if forsooth one had no hand in setting ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... also, that in the time of their breeding, which is in summer, when the sun hath warmed both the earth and water, and so apted them also for generation, that then three or four male Carps will follow a female; and that then, she putting on a seeming coyness, they force her through weeds and flags, where she lets fall her eggs or spawn, which sticks fast to the weeds; and then they let fall their melt upon it, and so it becomes in a short time to be a living fish: and, as I ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... erroneously bestowed, but whose tears and laughter was never in the wrong. The infection which had tainted lyric and didactic poetry had but slightly and partially touched the drama. While the noble and the learned were comparing eyes to burning-glasses, and tears to terrestrial globes, coyness to an enthymeme, absence to a pair of compasses, and an unrequited passion to the fortieth remainder-man in an entail, Juliet leaning from the balcony, and Miranda smiling over the chess-board, sent home many spectators, as kind and simple-hearted as the master ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... looked quite affectionately at his pet. I set it down as odd that so manly a lad should so openly show liking for a cat. The conduct of the animal in its making acquaintance with the dog; the good-humoured assurance of the one, and the cautious coyness of the other; amused us till presently Madge's voice was heard; and then we saw her coming from the garden, speaking to her father, who walked bareheaded beside her. Behind, at a little distance, came Madge's mother and little Tom. All four stopped at the gateway, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... would she have stood upon form, and have kept her lover at a distance, as the custom of discreet ladies is, to frown and be perverse, and give their suitors harsh denials at first; to stand off, and affect a coyness or indifference, where they most love, that their lovers may not think them too lightly or too easily won: for the difficulty of attainment increases the value of the object. But there was no room in her case ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... responsible being to the service of the King of kings. Still she was a young creature, suffered to grow up according to a gracious natural growth, not forced into premature expansion, permitted to preserve to the last the sweet girlish trust and confidence, the mingled coyness and fearlessness, pensive dreams and merry laughter, which constitute the ineffable freshness and tender ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... listen to! They rushed upon me, shrieking for the brilliants and money which they had brought me as an offering. How they scolded and called me a deceiver! I was only very beautiful and coquettish, and that was no deception! I charmed them with my coyness, and they brought me the most costly presents, because I was a virtuous woman. Now they reproached me, demanding a return of them all, which they had forced upon me of their own free will. I was obliged to bear it silently in my costume of innocence, and as goddess ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... with patient mind Still attend her wayward pleasure? Time will make her prove more kind, Let her coyness then take leisure: She is worthy ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... acted, and will not act, towards him the part of an enemy.—And now, farewell, long lost—long loved!"—Before he could say more, the Saxon maiden, after two or three vain attempts to express her gratitude, threw herself into her lover's arms, and despite the coyness which she had recently shown, impressed upon his lips the thanks ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... nonsense!" said good Doctor Brown, "So this is Turkish coyness, is it? You must contrive to fight it down— Come, come, sir, please ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... incredulously, and having made it plain that he refused to think—thought! He had risked so much in this enterprise, gone through so much; and to lose it all! He cursed the girl's fickleness, her coyness, her obstinacy! He hated her. And do what he might for her now, he doubted if he could cozen her or get much from her. Yet in that lay his only chance, apart from Mr. Pomeroy. His eye was cunning and his tone sly when ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... to the old gardener produced no effect—not so much as to make him shut his toothless mouth. Then he remembered that the man was stone deaf. All that time the girl struggled, not with maidenly coyness, but like a pretty, dumb fury, kicking his shins now and then. He continued to hold her as if in a vice, his instinct telling him that were he to let her go she would fly at his eyes. But he was ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... goal is set to you; Where'er you like to wander sipping, And catch a tit-bit in your skipping, Eschew all coyness, just fall to, And may ...
— Faust • Goethe
... perceived Annette rush to the window, and then hastily and with a dainty coyness withdraw her head from the pane; and at the same moment he heard a sprightly tune whistle'd. Looking down the meadow he saw a tall, well-formed young white man, a gun on his back, and a dog at his heels, walking along the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... I have in my time known honest gentlemen abused by a pretended coyness in their wives, and I had a mind to try my lady's virtue. And when I could not prevail for you, gad, I pretended to be in love myself; but all in vain, she would not hear a word upon that subject. Then I writ a letter to her; I don't know what effects ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... that repose so closely resembled slumber that one might well have mistaken it for such. I forgot that I had come there to perform a funeral ceremony; I fancied myself a young bridegroom entering the chamber of the bride, who all modestly hides her fair face, and through coyness seeks to keep herself wholly veiled. Heartbroken with grief, yet wild with hope, shuddering at once with fear and pleasure, I bent over her and grasped the corner of the sheet. I lifted it back, holding my breath all the while through fear of waking her. My arteries ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... a moment looking back at him with a coyness that might have become a girl of half her years, yet which her splendid beauty saved from being ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... motion of encouragement; and I deliberately secluded myself behind my coffee-cup and my cigarette smoke. I suppose it was the working of some obscure mannish vanity—of what in a woman would have defined itself as coyness and coquetry. If he wanted to speak—well, let him speak; I wouldn't help him. I could realise the processes of his mind even more clearly than those of my own—his desire, his hesitancy. He was too timid to leap the barriers; I must ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... strange little laugh, and with an assumption of coyness, that was, however, still affected, stooped to pick a few berries from ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... protesting palms against him and set her arms rigidly and held her head away, not with coyness, but with indignation ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... pollard-ash, out of sight of May, the cowslip-ball was finished. What a concentration of fragrance and beauty it was! golden and sweet to satiety! rich to sight, and touch, and smell! Lizzy was enchanted, and ran off with her prize, hiding amongst the trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as if any human eye, even mine, would be a ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... state of nervous excitation (as is seen especially well in the wooing of birds), while the male must conduct himself in such a way as to manipulate the female; and, as the more active agent, he develops a marvelous display of technique for this purpose. This is offset by the coyness and coquetry of the female, by which she equally attracts and fascinates the male and practices upon him to induce a corresponding state of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... leaves: trees there are all sheeted with variegated fire, shedding far a glimmer into the dubious wood. There, under the free sky, do tight-limbed Federates, with fairest newfound sweethearts, elastic as Diana, and not of that coyness and tart humour of Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all through the ambrosial night; and hearts were touched and fired; and seldom surely had our old Planet, in that huge conic Shadow of hers 'which goes beyond the Moon, and is named Night,' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... somewhat breathless, tripped away, with simulated coyness and many curtseys. She had done her task, and as a woman she had to go: this was a gathering of members of the Mutual Burial Club, a masculine company, and not meet for females. The men pulled themselves ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... was she; full of striving—no relenting. There was none of those apparent struggles to get out of the trap which only results in getting further in: no final attitude of receptivity: no easy close of shoulder to shoulder, hand upon hand, face upon face, and, in spite of coyness, the lips in the right place at the supreme moment. That graceful though apparently accidental falling into position, which many have noticed as precipitating the end and making sweethearts the sweeter, was not here. Why? Because experience ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... lightness will, in shame it ends. Love makes thee cunning; thou art current now, By being counterfeit: thy broken vow Deceit with her pied garters must rejoin, And with her stamp thou countenances must coin; Coyness, and pure deceits, for purities, And still a maid wilt seem in cozen'd eyes, And have an antic face to laugh within, While thy smooth looks make men digest thy sin, But since thy lips (least thought forsworn) forswore, Be never virgin's vow worth trusting more!" When Beauty's ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... display his talents, even to an ogre, under protecting circumstances; and after a few more signs of coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and then peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious for the "carril", he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted, ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... answered by an incredulous smile, which, for all his monastic subtlety, struck him as the expression of a young girl's coyness. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... always comedy, even when played. Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," recognizes a real innate coyness, and that not merely of the female sex, which has been a great factor in improving the race. And, since we are come to the scientific standpoint, let it be admitted that marriage is a racial safeguard which does not exhaust the possibilities of romantic passion. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W——n;[342-16] and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hear right, I sooner will find out the beds of Snakes, And with my youthful blood warm their cold flesh, Letting them curle themselves about my Limbs, Than sleep one night with thee; this is not feign'd, Nor sounds it like the coyness of a Bride. ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... shut To decency; soft female bashfulness Deserted you; those cheeks, which were before The seat of virtuous, blushing modesty, Glowed with the flames of unrestrained desire. You cast away the veil of secrecy, And the flagitious daring of the man O'ercame your natural coyness: you exposed Your shame, unblushingly, to public gaze: You let the murderer, whom the people followed With curses, through the streets of Edinburgh, Before you bear the royal sword of Scotland ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Either for this reason or because of the proximity to English bottom, the steamer ceased her coyness, and her crew watched from the taffrail, while those implacable, purposeful men behind crept up to them. It was slow, laborious work; for the small windlass would not grip the heavy links of the chain, and they must needs climb ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... room, leaving him in a consternation impossible to describe, almost to conceive; her mother came in immediately after, and judging by his countenance how her daughter had behaved, told him he must not regard the coyness of a young girl; that she doubted not but Maria would soon be convinced what was her true happiness; and that a little perseverance and assiduity on his side, and authority on theirs, would remove all the scruples, bashfulness ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... deceived by that prophetic voice. He dined with appetite undiminished by his companion's gloom. From time to time he rallied him on his coyness under the fascinations of beef-steak, lager ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... us see," returned the Earl of March, who accompanied him, "whether it be not Caesar's coyness; he thrice refused the purple, and yet he died ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... (contrary to the old metaphysics) the existence of such instincts as fear, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play (or, properly, playfulness), curiosity, sociability, shyness, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, coyness or personal isolation, jealousy, parental love, etc., he shows the spirit of science. But is it not self-evident, Mr. James, to a man of your fine intelligence, that all strong impulses (or instincts, as you call them) must have a special nervous apparatus in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... wou'd have ye—d'ye see—'twill not out; why, I wou'd have ye lie with the Sultan, Huswife; I wonder how the Devil you have the face to refuse him, so handsom, so young a Lover; come, come, let me hear no more of your Coyness, Mistress, for if I do, I shall be hang'd; [Aside. The Great Turk's a most worthy Gentleman, and therefore I advise you to do as he advises you; and the Devil take ye ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... She seems to grow silent too; to me she rarely speaks, and when I am present, she says little to others. In my gloomy moments I attribute this change to indifference, aversion, what not? In my sunny intervals I give it another meaning. I say, were I her equal, I could find in this shyness coyness, and in that coyness love. As it is, dare I look for it? What could I do with it ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Ophelia, in the third act,[1] Hamlet is beginning with great and unfeigned tenderness; but, perceiving her reserve and coyness, fancies there are some listeners, and then, to sustain his part, breaks out ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... of blue foxes and of young birds clothed her. From her sleeves her hands peeped; they were small, dainty, childlike. Almost childlike, too, was her face, so palely golden, so fresh, so lovely, so petite. There were mingled in her the coyness of a child and the irresistible coquetry of ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... her a wash and brush-up, dress her in a gauzy frock, and exchange her thick woollen stockings and wooden sabots for silk and dancing slippers, she would make a very smart little fairy. Even in her native state she is a most attractive young person, of an engaging coyness. If you say: "Bonjour, Gabrielle!" she whispers: "B'jour M'sieur le Capitaine"—or, "M'sieur le Caporal"; for she knows all badges of rank—and hangs her head demurely. But presently, if you stand quite still and look ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... for you undight! And all I do t' outdrive you from my thought * 'Vails naught and 'gainst th' obsession loses might: Couldst for thy lover feel 'twould ease his soul; * E'en thy dear Phantom would his sprite delight! Then on my weakness lay not coyness-load * Nor in such breach of troth be traitor-wight: And, weet ye well, for this your land I fared * Hoping to 'joy the union-boon forthright: How many a stony wold for this I spanned; * How oft I waked when men kept watch o'night! To fare fro' another land ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... hard to find excuses for her. He strove to convince himself that this strange coldness, this evasion, this half-repellent attitude, was but a form of maiden coyness. It was her natural fear of so great a change. It was the result, perhaps, of some last lingering look back to the scene of her artistic triumphs. It did not even occur to him as a possibility that this woman with her unstable sympathies and her fatally facile imagination, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... there is something charming in a girl simply because she is a girl. It is in the ring of her laugh, in her irony, in her frankness or her coyness, in the way she does the commonest things,— puts on her scarf, or catches hold of your arm,—things that only too soon disappear in conventionalities, ceremonies, and proprieties. But there is no need of this change as concerns ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... governments of Europe. But we were then just emerged from a subordinate condition; the nations had as yet known nothing of us and had not yet reflected on the relations which it might be their interest to establish with us. Most of them, therefore, listened to our propositions with coyness and reserve; old Frederic alone closing with us without hesitation. The negotiator of Portugal, indeed, signed a treaty with us, which his government did not ratify, and Tuscany was near a final agreement. Becoming sensible, however, ourselves, that we should do nothing with the greater powers, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... be done in this instance!" promptly responded the baroness, proffering, without affectation of maidenly coyness, the ceremonial kiss, and cordially shaking hands with the vice-palatine. Then ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... marriage. Lily declined the proposal with so much vehemence that he dared not insist. He pulled his mustache in rage after he left her, and wondered why he did not insist. By what means, he cogitated, could he make her yield her will to his? Her resistance he set down to coyness; all women had freaks; they were alike in such matters. He divined after a while that she would let go the lasso at any moment if he proved restive; so he played the submissive to perfection. If she ever saw his eyes flame, or any gesture which contained a threat, he never knew ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... I am not provoking. I am merely complimentary. Conversation is an art, Louisa. None of my sisters ever can be got to understand that. It is dreadfully crude to rush in waist-deep at once. There should be feints and approaches. You should nibble at your sugar with a graceful coyness. You should cut a few frills and skirmish a little before setting the battle actively in array. And it is just this that I have been striving to do during the last five minutes. But you do not appear to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... inferior for the blending. In appearance they were inane, in speech laconic; they were shy in manners, and reserved, to boorishness, while in intellectual alertness they were inferior to the boisterous savage, or the shrewd, dignified white. But the woman perpetuated the shy, winning coyness of her red mother, and the arts, and somewhat of the refinements of her white father. The eye was not so dusk; it gleamed more: as if the ray from a star had been shot through it. There was the same olive cheek; but it was not so tawny, for the dawn of the white blood had appeared in ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... twenty-five, need not prevent a marriage. A man of forty-five may marry a woman of twenty-five much more safely than one of thirty a girl below nineteen, because her mental sexuality is not as mature as his, and again her natural coyness requires more delicate and affectionate treatment than he is likely to bestow. A girl of twenty or under should seldom if ever marry a man of thirty or over, because the love of an elderly man for a girl is more parental than conjugal; while hers for him is ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... in my wallet at once and have bought your freedom and have carried you off home as my wife—and no Masdakite who saw you would ever blame me. Now you know all about it, and there, I hope, is an end of your coyness and mincing." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all straight, for what I know," said the widow gently, as with a trace of coyness she gave a hasty glance. "I don't know but what 'tis warped a little, but nothin' to speak of. You've got real nice ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the most dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, and prodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on the contrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with maiden coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems and Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of the season, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarante to keep the excitement going; there was old Methuselah, who had married his young wife, with Captain Papillon ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... surprised when he is told that this unsophisticated being did not view Mabel's recent conduct in precisely the light in which he may be inclined to view it himself. He did not credit all that the Sergeant told him, it is true; but he began to think virgin coyness and ignorance of her own feelings might have induced Mabel to use ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... consists in the concealing of certain parts of the body, avoiding certain topics of conversation, especially in the presence of the other sex, and behaving in such fashion as to restrict sexual demonstration. There is a natural coyness in women which has been socially emphasized by restrictions in dress, conduct and speech to a ridiculous degree. Thus it was immodest in our civilization for women to show their legs, and the leg became the symbol of the femaleness ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... surrounded with a Crowd of Adorers, she took no Pleasure in Slaughter and Destruction, gave no false deluding Hopes which might encrease the Torments of her disappointed Lovers; but having for some Time given to the Decency of a Virgin Coyness, and examined the Merit of their several Pretensions, she at length gratified her own, by resigning herself to the ardent Passion of Bromius. Bromius was then Master of many good Qualities and a moderate Fortune, which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... love. She wishes to be as free to seek a man as he is to seek her—to love him as freely and frankly as he does her. Why should she withhold her lips after her heart has surrendered? Why should she keep the pretence of coyness long after ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... me; endure what this portends: Begin where lightness will, in shame it ends. Love makes thee cunning; thou art current now, 250 By being counterfeit: thy broken vow Deceit with her pied garters must rejoin, And with her stamp thou countenances must coin; Coyness, and pure[88] deceits, for purities, And still a maid wilt seem in cozen'd eyes, And have an antic face to laugh within, While thy smooth looks make men digest thy sin. But since thy lips (least thought forsworn) forswore, Be never virgin's vow worth trusting more!" When Beauty's dearest did ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the ejaculations, and whipped away from Harrington into the window. Zoe, with no motive but her own coyness, had already snatched her ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a letter, evidently written by some girl to a man at the 'varsity. Finding it there, forgotten and defenseless, I could not resist reading it. It was a very charming letter, not too intimate, but full of a delicious virgin coyness and reserve. Then a great idea struck me. Why not take the people mentioned in the letter and use them as the characters of our story? We know that they are real people; we know their first names; that's ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... at such an uncivil reception, a few of the party demurred; but all coyness was, at last, overcome; and finally our feet were inserted into heavy anklets of iron, running along a great bar bolted down to the deck. After this, we considered ourselves permanently ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... accompanied by a female friend from Houssa. Her hair was traced with such extraordinary neatness, that John Lander expressed a wish to examine it more minutely. The girl had never beheld such a thing as a white man before, and permission was granted with a great deal of coyness, mixed up perhaps with a small portion of fear, which was apparent as she was slowly untying her turban. No sooner, however, was the curiosity of the travellers gratified, than a demand of two hundred kowries was insisted on by her companion, that, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... with an affectation of coyness that was irresistibly amusing. Dorothy laughed merrily, and Rhoda resisted doing the same only by an enormous effort of self-will. She succeeded, however, in looking sulky and bad-tempered, and went downstairs feeling quite pleased with herself for resisting ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a politician not to feel the absolute necessity of at last coming into the field to help the Netherlanders to fight her own battle, she was still willing, for a season longer, to wear the mask of coyness and coquetry, which she thought most adapted to irritate the Netherlanders into a full compliance with her wishes. Her advisers in the Provinces were inclined to take the same view. It seemed obvious, after the failure in France, that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thy heat and stir The greater coyness breed in her: Yet thou may'st find, ere Age's frost, Thy long apprenticeship not lost, Learning at last that Stygian Fate Supples for him that knows to wait. The Muse is womanish, nor deigns Her love to him who pules and plains; With proud, averted face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as his proxy, truly!—I utterly, to my brother, reject his address; but thinking a person, so well received and recommended by all my family, entitled to good manners, all I say against him is affectedly attributed to coyness: and he, not being sensible of his own imperfections, believes that my avoiding him when I can, and the reserves I express, are owing to nothing else: for, as I said, all his courtship is to them; and I have no opportunity ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... frumps; they make Heloise furious, and the airs of Victorine, her coyness and giggling, nearly drove me wild. I sat next to Monsieur Y, and although he is a Baron of very old family he ate like a pig. The food was extraordinarily good, but the proof of good service here is to get the whole dinner—of I don't ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... answer; though that earnest, yet timid gaze, long remained, and for that matter, still remains, vividly impressed upon my recollection. It seemed to express astonishment, startled sensibility, feminine bashfulness, and maiden coyness; but it did not appear to me that it expressed displeasure. There was no time, however, to ask for explanations, since the voices of Herman Mordaunt and Bulstrode were now heard at the very door, and, at the next instant, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... pen in hand, and laughed at the confusion on the table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without that self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form of coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands en camarade, gazed ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... no comfort for Paul, who recoiled, with all the maiden coyness of one to whom such unions are unfamiliar, from a matrimonial alliance with the snuggery of the House of Correction. He rather trusted to another source for consolation. In a word, he encouraged the flattering belief that Long Ned, finding that Paul had been caught ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by placing descriptions of one character in the mouth of another. "How stately she passeth bye, yet how soberly!" exclaims Alexander watching Campaspe at a distance, "a sweet consent in her countenance with a chaste disdaine, desire mingled with coyness, and I cannot tell how to tearme it, a curst yeelding modestie!"—an excellent piece of description, and one which is very necessary for the animation of the shadowy Campaspe. At times however Lyly can dispense with ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... may now talk freely: 'bove merit! what is 't you doubt? her coyness! that 's but the superficies of lust most women have; yet why should ladies blush to hear that named, which they do not fear to handle? Oh, they are politic; they know our desire is increased by the difficulty of enjoying; whereas satiety is a blunt, weary, and drowsy passion. If the ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... only once in a lifetime. With the violets, the beautiful blush-bells of the anemone come garlanded with their graceful leaves, plentifully enough. But did the rambler ever find the sensitive fern, which resented the intrusive hand with all Mimosa's coyness? I never did but once. I have wooed many a delicate frond of all varieties of fern since, but never one so conscious. Now, too, ere the trees come into leaf, is the time to seek the boxwood, called, I hope improperly, by the ominous name of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... love when she played Cleopatra that one might well pardon the peccadilloes of poor Antony. But as yet there was no thought of drooping eyelids or amorous glances; all was natural, and nothing more so than the coyness of Nance upon seeing the author of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... hitherto sought not to see, the true child of a worthless mother. A mere mesalliance, if palliated by long or familiar acquaintance with the object, however it might have galled him, his heart might have pardoned; but here, without even a struggle of duty, without the ordinary coyness of maiden pride, to be won with so scanty a wooing, by a man who she knew was betrothed to another—the dissimulation, the perfidy, the combined effrontery and meanness of the whole transaction, left no force in Darrell's eyes to the common place excuses ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... To Charles she was coyness itself—virtue personified. While smiling graciously on him she kept him at arm's length, thus adding to her attractions the allurement of an unexpected virtue. So jealously did she guard her favours that the French ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... gracious, bestowed on the fair Saxon Knight. On that second day the Queen wrote to her uncle Leopold: "Albert's beauty is most striking, and he is most amiable and unaffected; in short, very fascinating." She then added, with an exquisite touch of maiden coyness: "The young men are both amiable, delightful companions, and I am glad to have ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... appeared to be starting out of his head. Horrible thoughts occurred to him. He glared at Miller as if he were responsible for Bridget's departure, and with miserable sensations he began to put a new interpretation upon the coyness which he had found so seductive ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... mine, which he must have taken for coyness, had apparently the effect of increasing his wanton appetite—for that is the name I give to his passion for me; had it been what he declared it to be, you would not know of it now, because there would have been no occasion to tell you of it. At length he learned that my ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The poem, after all, turned out to be but a lover's appeal to his mistress to give over coyness and use time while she might; but Dorothea wondered why its solemn language should have hit her namesake's fancy, and, turning a few more pages, discovered that this merry dead girl had chosen and copied out other ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quite struck by it. 'I shall call her May before I leave her,' he thought, gazing at her, and discovering how well the name suited her, with its significances of alertness, geniality, and half-mocking coyness. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... enough and time, This coyness, Binkie, were not crime. . . . But at my back I always hear——'" He wiped his forehead, which was unpleasantly damp. "What can I do? What can I do? I haven't any notions left, and I can't think connectedly, but I must do something, or I ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... rode to the hut with a spare horse and side saddle. Both horses were well groomed, the side saddle was new, the bits, buckles, and stirrup-irons were like burnished silver. Cecily could ride well even without a saddle, but had never owned one. She yielded to temptation, but with becoming coyness and modesty. Frank put one hand on his knee, holding the bridle with the other; then Cicely raised one of her little feet, was lifted lightly on to the saddle, and the happy pair cantered gaily over the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... gave her to know his desire, that she should become the dear wife of the squire. "La! now, Mr. Friendly, what would they all say?" but she thought that not one of them all would say nay: she was flustered with pleasure, and coyness, and pride to be thus unexpectedly sued for a bride. She did not refuse him, but yet did not like, to say "Yes," all at once— the hot iron to strike; so to give the proposal the greater eclat, she said, "Dear Mr. Friendly,—you'd best, ask mamma!" ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... had happened, though she could not see. She shrank closer to Kazan. She knew that the moon and the stars had looked down on that thing that always meant death—the challenge to the right of mate. With her luring coyness, whining and softly muzzling his shoulder and neck, she tried to draw Kazan away from the pad-beaten circle in which the bull lay. Kazan's answer was an ominous rolling of smothered thunder deep down in his throat. ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Clare, and drank tea with him. To Drury Lane playhouse, but could not get in, so we went to the Robin Hood Society, and stayed till after 10. The question was, whether the increase of unmarried people was owing to the men's greater bashfulness, or women's greater coyness, than formerly. ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray
... to walk there a little while undisturbed, until the dawning became more general, by which time she supposed he might have digested her coyness, and then presenting herself before the watchful sentinel, demanded of him "the keys of the outer tower, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... to himself, "if she really wished to avoid me and put me off her track, it is because she loves me. With women of that stamp, coyness is a proof of love. Well, if I had carried the adventure any further, it would, perhaps, have ended in disgust. I will sleep ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... recently taken into her service. Both these were Protestants, and, like the Bridgefield family, attended service in the castle chapel. They were all at work, as was likewise their royal lady, to whom the girl, with the youthful coyness that halts in the fulfilment of its dreams, did not at first raise her eyes, having first taken in all the ladies, the several portions of one great coverlet which they were all embroidering in separate pieces, and the gentleman who was reading aloud to them from ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tall girl: it filled the eye and held fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved or stood, suggestive of the beauty of a tame fawn, that in all its movements preserves somewhat of the coyness and easy grace of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul; that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Juice; The golden Fruit that worthy is Of Galetea's purple Kiss; He does the savage Hawthorn teach To bear the Medlar and the Pear, He bids the rustick Plumb to rear A noble Trunk, and be a Peach, Ev'n Daphnes Coyness he does mock, And weds the Cherry to her stock, Though she refus'd Apollo's suit; Ev'n she, that chast and Virgin-tree Now wonders at her self, to see That she's a Mother made, and blushes in ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... a time the boredom of a long, dull voyage, were eager to make a pet of the interesting and mysterious hero; but Jim's moroseness deepened under the attacks, and at length he escaped with only a glance of almost maidenly coyness whenever circumstances threw him in the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... gravity of aspect, lighted by the deep, gleaming eye that recoiled with girlish coyness from contact with your gaze; of rare courtesy and kindliness in personal intercourse, yet so sensitive that his look and manner can be suggested by the word "glimmering;" giving you a sense of restrained impatience to be away; mostly silent in society, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Pe-be-gwun, or flute. For some time Mis-kwa-bun-o-kwa pretended she was not willing to marry me, and it was not, perhaps, until she perceived some abatement of ardour on my part that she laid this affected coyness entirely aside. For my own part, I found that my anxiety to take a wife home to my lodge was rapidly becoming less and less. I made several efforts to break off the intercourse, and visit her no more; but a lingering inclination was too strong for me. When she perceived my growing indifference, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... my charge. I shall fulfil it," she said—determined, and not without a suggestion of coyness withal. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... Aurora borne by dappled steeds, The sacred gate of orient pearl and gold, Smitten with Lucifer's light silver wand, Expanded slow to strains of harmony: The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves Glancing with wanton coyness tow'rd their queen, Heaved softly; thus the damsel's bosom heaves When from her sleeping lover's downy cheek, To which so warily her own she brings Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth Of coming kisses fanned by playful dreams. Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee. ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... acorn brown Or blushing berry; by the liquid lapse Of murmuring waters called to slake their thirst, Or with fair nymphs their sun-brown limbs to bathe; With nymphs who fondly clasped their favourite youths, Unawed by shame, beneath the beechen shade, Nor wiles nor artificial coyness knew. Then doors and walls were not; the melting maid Nor frown of parents feared, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... tins of sardines and beef essence, which she carried concealed in her stockings. Occasional vagaries on the part of these affectionate wives were subsequently explained to the complete satisfaction of their captive lords. Mrs. Butters' coyness and refusal to be embraced because of the flask of coffee in her bosom is an instance of this. All this sounds very funny now, but it was desperately earnest work then. In time the stringent rules relaxed. The prisoners ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... appetites of Maximin were gratified at the expense of his subjects. His eunuchs, who forced away wives and virgins, examined their naked charms with anxious curiosity, lest any part of their body should be found unworthy of the royal embraces. Coyness and disdain were considered as treason, and the obstinate fair one was condemned to be drowned. A custom was gradually introduced, that no person should marry a wife without the permission of the emperor, "ut ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... with harmonious sounds and aromatic odors; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness. The soldier and the philosopher wisely avoided the temptation of this sensual paradise: where pleasure, assuming the character of religion, imperceptibly dissolved the firmness of manly virtue. But the groves of Daphne continued for many ages to enjoy the veneration of natives and strangers; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the more effective for that. The possessor of this one, fully aware of her advantage, was displaying, for her partner's delectation, the most wonderful airs and graces. She glided about upon the points of her toes; she gave him her delicately poised finger-tips with a birdlike coyness which the glance of her beady black eyes belied. Joe was in his element, playing ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... she had named the very hour he had asked for the night before. That was like her good, frank way of meeting a situation, and it augured well for the unknown emergencies of their future life. He had little patience with timidity and traditional coyness in women, and great admiration for an open and fearless spirit. Melanie's note ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... which pulleys are attached, through which run ropes with hooks at their ends, by means of which the water-pots are lowered. This is a great place of congregation for the young people, and is always surrounded by animated groups of young men and maidens, who, with pretty courtesies or coyness, carry ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... protection against danger to life, and (b) as a means of conferring fecundity on girls[266] provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly intensified by the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... herself, humorous, playful, and radiant with animal spirits. Ada Rehan embodied her according to that ideal. The chief exaction of the part is simplicity—which yet must not be allowed to degenerate into tameness. The sweet affection of a daughter for her father, the coyness yet the allurement of a girl for her lover, the refinement of high birth, the blithe bearing and free demeanour of a child of the woods, and the predominant dignity of purity and honour—those are the salient attributes of the part. Ada Rehan struck ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... lights the face of the Madonna della Scala. The composition is somewhat in the portrait style, showing the mother in half length, seated under a sort of canopy. The babe clings closely to her neck, turning about at the spectator with a glance half shy and half mischievous. His coyness awakens a smile of tender amusement in the gentle, young face ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... away the gloom and as he gazed on her, all would be forgotten. Amine made no secret of her attachment; it was shown in every word, every look, and every gesture. When Philip would take her hand, or encircle her waist with his arm, or even when he pressed her coral lips, there was no pretence of coyness on her part. She was too noble, too confiding; she felt that her happiness was centred in his love, and she lived but in his presence. Two months had thus passed away, when Father Seysen, who often called, and had paid much attention to Amine's ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... she might not leave the Sultan angry with the Lady Bedrulbudour, said to him, "O King of the Age, this is the wont of most brides, on their wedding-day, to be shamefast and show somewhat of coyness. So be not vexed with her and after a day or two she will return to herself and proceed to speak with the folk; but now, O King of the Age, shame hindereth her from speaking. However, I purpose to go ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... for a walk to nowhere in particular." She looked at him with an irresistible mixture of coyness and frankness and suggested, "Would you care to come for a little walk too? It's far too ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... for Amy was becoming a deeply interesting study. He saw and appreciated her delicate fence with Burt, in which tact, kindness, and a little girlish brusqueness were almost equally blended. Was it the natural coyness of a high-spirited girl, who could be won only by long and patient effort? or was it an instinctive self-defence from a suit that she could not repulse decisively without giving pain to those she loved? Why was she so averse? Their ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... she had seen, had realized, had spun on her apology for a tail, and had gone, leaving a little trail of foam behind her to prove her speed and her coyness. But, quick as light, the magnificent male seal had sunk from sight, leaving a little chain of bursting bubbles behind to mark his speed. And the last that was seen of that lady seal was a speck far on ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... surely be accompanied by heightened emotional tone. Whether we call it choice or not is merely a matter of definition of terms. The behaviour is in part determined by supplementary psychological values. Prof. Groos regards the coyness of females as "a most efficient means of preventing the too early and too frequent yielding to the sexual impulse." (Ibid. page 283.) Be that as it may, it is, in any case, if we grant the facts, a means through which male sexual behaviour with ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... first novel was accepted. Not an ambitious volume. It was rather short, and the plot was not obtrusive. The sporting gentlemen who accepted it, however—Messrs. Prodder and Way—seemed pleased with it; though, when I suggested a sum in cash in advance of royalties, they displayed a most embarrassing coyness—and also, as events turned ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... in when they mounted their horses and withdrew, both well pleased with their visit—for the young lord was in pursuit of amusement only, and seeing at a glance the coyness of the heiress, and the somewhat forward coquetry of her sister, he had accommodated himself to circumstances, and determined that a passing flirtation with so pretty a girl, and a short sejour at a house so well-appointed as Ditton, would be no unpleasant substitute for London in the dog-days; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... flowers strewn in his path, had produced their effect, and the Earl was almost inclined to assume the airs of royalty. The committee waited upon him at Leyden. He affected a reluctance to accept the "absolute" government, but his coyness could not deceive such experienced statesmen as the "wise old Leoliinus," or Menin, Maalzoon, Florin Thin, or Aitzma, who composed the deputation. It was obvious enough to them that it was not a King Log that had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... permitted to engaged couples in rural neighborhoods, where the young girl is allowed to go on a journey at her lover's expense. A girl's natural protectors should know better than to allow this. They know that her purity is her chief attraction to man, and that a certain coyness and virginal freshness are the dowry she should bring her future husband. Suppose that this engagement is broken off. How will she be accepted by another lover after having enjoyed the hospitality of the first? Would it not always make a disagreeable feeling between the two men, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... continued, "Although I seldom drink myself, it was my custom to always keep some nourishing liquor in my house for passing guests, but to-night I find myself without any." I hastened to offer him my flask, which, after a moment's coyness, he accepted, and presently under its benign influence at least ten years dropped from his shoulders, and he sat up in his chair ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... experience would suggest; but let me repeat once more from the seclusion of my valley that the viaticum of married life lies in these words—resignation and self-sacrifice. For, spite of all your tests, your coyness, and your vigilance, I can see that marriage will mean to you what it has been to me. The greater the passion, the steeper the precipice we have hewn for our fall—that is the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... always disappeared as we drew nearer. The beast is quick to take alarm at the slightest noise, and not only the paddles of a steamer, but even the plash of oars, will drive him into the water. For his coyness we were partly consoled by the gambols of the river-horses. All round the boat these creatures were popping up their huge snouts and shoulders, splashing about, and then plunging again into the swirling water. Fortunately ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Eudora began, with deliberate and heavy coyness; "I'm so fond of little children! I've always loved them. That's why your kind Principal brought me here to talk to you. Now, wasn't that good ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... should be amid the riders which the haltered camels urge, * But that same lover whose beloved cloth in the litters wone: To Allah's charge I leave that moon-like Beauty in your tents * Whom my heart loves, albe my glance on her may ne'er be thrown. Now she is fain; then she is fierce: how sweet her coyness shows; * Yea sweet whatever cloth or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... her lot; and, since she was thus indissolubly bound up with another, she had to try to live with that other. Hortense, externally so gentle and yielding, so full of maiden coyness and delicacy, nevertheless possessed a strong and resolute soul, and, in the noble pride of her wounded heart, was unwilling to give any one the right to pity her. Her soul wept, but she restrained ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... When he told her father that he was quite contented to take her just as she was, without a shilling, she knew that he would do so with the utmost joy. Then it was that she resolved that he should have her, and that for the future all doubtings, all flirtations, all coyness, should be over. She had been won, and she lowered her flag. "You stick to it, and you'll do it," she said;—and this time she meant it. "I shall," said Ontario;—and he walked all the way back to London, with his head among the clouds, disregarding Percycross ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Ben, but none of these things marred his fatuous felicity. It is even probable that in his gratuitous belief that his timid attentions had been too marked and impulsive, he attributed Cressy's flight to a maidenly coyness that pleasurably increased his admiration for her and his confidence in himself. In his abstraction of enjoyment and in the gathering darkness he ran against a fir-tree very much as he had done while walking with her, and he confusedly apologized ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... to forget her gentle look or the coyness of her hands. He knew her fate; he knew her soul. But he was condemned to silence. To withdraw from contact with the world and into the deepest of loneliness had been her lot; it had also been his. At present ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... times in those last few days of coyness with his destiny when his engagement seemed the most negligible of circumstances, and times—and these happened for the most part at nights after Mrs. Johnson had indulged everybody in a Welsh rarebit—when ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... flounders. "Dree and zixpence if you like," said he. "I could a bought vour times as much vor one and zixpence coast-ways, if I'd a mind, and I'll give thee no more, and not a word of a lie." His oratory conquered the coyness of the fishy damsel; and he invited the lady to take a glass of "zomat avore he topped ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... it a marriage certificate down there. Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts." It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victory was by no means an easy one. To a natural degree of coyness on the part of the lady was added the impediment of a rival—a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick at the theater and church, his professional habits debarring ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... gold, slaves, and jewels, and is equivalent to one hundred pesos)—they go to bring the bride from the house of her parents. One of the Indians takes her on his shoulders; and on arriving at the foot of the stairway to the bridegroom's house, she affects coyness, and says that she will not enter. When many entreaties have proved useless, the father-in-law comes out and promises to give her a slave if she will go up. She mounts the staircase, for the slave; but when she reaches the top of the stairway and looks into ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... color showed itself in Lady Alice's delicate face. "He does know," she whispered, almost with the coyness ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... What every look and action would reveal. With boldness then, which seldom fails to move, He pleads the cause of Marriage and of Love: 10 The course of Hymeneal joys he rounds, The fair one's eyes danc'd pleasure at the sounds. Nought now remain'd but 'Noes'—how little meant! And the sweet coyness that endears consent. The youth upon his knees enraptur'd fell: 15 The strange misfortune, oh! what words can tell? Tell! ye neglected sylphs! who lap-dogs guard, Why snatch'd ye not away your precious ward? Why suffer'd ye ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... cheese-plates (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek Professors!), but because of all kinds of caters of fish, or flesh, or fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not gregarious; but subduing themselves, as it were, to the nature of what they work in, and copying the coyness of the thing they eat, do sit apart in curtained boxes, and consort by twos, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... stop!" she said with no coyness implied. "None of the gentlemen ever acted up this ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... grove, Even there I meet with sacred Love. If so I bain[1] me in the spring, Even on the brink I hear him sing: If so I meditate alone, He will be partner of my moan. If so I mourn, he weeps with me, And where I am there will he be. Whenas I talk of Rosalynde The god from coyness waxeth kind, And seems in selfsame flames to fry Because he loves as well as I. Sweet Rosalynde, for pity rue; For why, than Love I am more true: He, if he speed, will quickly fly, But in thy love I ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... was to preserve our literary history from the Restoration. This silent labour he had been pursuing all his life, and published the first volume in his sixty-eighth year, the very year he died. But he was so sensible of the coyness of the public taste for what he calls, in a letter to a literary friend, "a tedious heavy book," that he gave it away to the publisher. "The volume, too large, brings me no profit. In good truth, the scheme was ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... may have meant no more than the natural coyness of a maiden whom the learned Upton somewhat drolly designates as "a skittish female." [3] Indeed, Spenser must have thought so himself, and with reason, for she continues to receive his presents, "the kids, the cracknels, and the early fruit," sent through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... tete with Emily, which Clara had considerately given us before breakfast, to speak of our anticipated union; and finding there were no other obstacles than those which are usually raised by "maiden pride and bashful coyness," so natural, so becoming, and so lovely in the sex, I determined to speak to the grey-beards ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... silver groat) upon the minstrels, if they would play a lively dance for him, and she, the May Queen, would grace him with her hand in it. Encouraged by the laughter of the bystanders, and doubtless entertaining no great dislike to the proposal, Gillian, with a little affected coyness, consented; and the mark was immediately deposited in the tambourine by Dick, who, transported by his success, sprang from his saddle, and committing his steed to the care of a youth near him, whom he promised ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... when we turn to the study of modesty in women cannot be dismissed as a group of artificially-imposed customs. They gain rather than lose in importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual demands of women, calling for coyness in courtship, lead to the temporary suppression of another feminine instinct of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... relinquish my chances of wealth and position. Henceforth I summoned all my will-power in order to efface the disastrous impression caused by my attitude. I assured my future husband that what he had mistaken for want of love was only the natural coyness of my youth. He was only too ready to believe me. We decided to hasten the marriage, and ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... but he thinks that this would be his choice if he were sure of its being accepted." Thereafter the Countess received the most flattering attentions at Court, a proof that the Hapsburg match was now favoured, even though the coyness of the Czar was ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... about nine the girl is more aggressive than the boy in love affairs. At this age her modesty, coyness and native love for being wooed, come to the surface and thereafter characterize her attitude toward the ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... sometimes may Princes please, And Courts do oft divert in Cottages, And prize the Joys with some young rural Maid, On Beds of Grass beneath a lovely Shade, 'Bove all the Pride of City-Jilts, whose Arts Are more to gain your Purses than your Hearts; Whose chiefest Beauty lies in being fine; And Coyness is not Virtue, but Design. We use no Colours to adorn the Face, No artful Looks, nor no affected Grace, The neighbouring Stream serves for a Looking-glass. Ambition is not known within our Groves; Here's no Dispute for ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... violin. They were not, however, to be contented with one reel; so, after fruitlessly attempting to make the ladies join us, we sent over to the men's houses for the old Canadian wife of Pierre Lattinville and her two blooming daughters. They soon came, and after much coyness, blushing, and hesitation, at last stood up, and under the inspiring influence of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... of coyness was to have been expected, and he therefore continued with another portion of his prepared words, which now came glibly enough to him. But it was a previous portion. It was all the same to Miss Thoroughbung, as it declared plainly the gentleman's intention. "If I can induce ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... spirit of the occasion with Western thoroughness and learned a lesson in a few hours which it has taken some men years to learn—that hot rum when taken on a cold and empty stomach must be treated with respect; in fact, a certain amount of coyness is not out of place. Mid was soon being supported on a chair while he delivered an epic on the "soul of a jellyfish"; he was then tossed in the "sacred blanket" and put through other Bedouin initiations; ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... regard to sexual love, and the coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women at ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche |
